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Saturday, May 31, 2014

I’ve become part
of a group that meets each year at ConCarolinas, and this is becoming one of
the highlights of my annual convention circuit. Last year, many of us agreed to
arrive on Thursday (“the new Friday”) to enjoy a relaxed dinner and evening
together before the non-stop panels and hall conversations and dealers’ room
browsing and more panels and costume gawking and more hall conversations that
make up ConCarolinas.

An additional
benefit to driving and arriving on Thursday was a lovely relaxed morning, up
through lunchtime and into the early afternoon. It felt like a real vacation,
not the super-rushed experience of most cons. I could get used to this!

I was surprised,
actually, to realize that programming began before the opening ceremonies at
4pm. I had planned to get a little work-work done after lunch and before
setting it aside for the weekend. There were a couple of writers’ panels I
would have like to see, but it’s never possible to do it all.

I headed down to
the convention space about 3pm and said hello to a lot of familiar faces,
mostly along the authors row in front of the main “Lakeshore” programming
rooms. I was delighted to see Faith Hunter, author of the Jane Yellowrock and
Rogue Mage series; Tamsin Silver, A.J. Hartley and Stuart Jaffre, whom I’ve
come to know and admire through the MagicalWords.net community; David B. Coe,
one of the first fantasy authors I ever befriended; and John Hartness, author
of the hilarious Bubba the Monster Hunter series. John and Emily Leverett
co-edited last year’s Big Bad anthology,
and although I wouldn’t have thought it my usual fare, hearing them talk about
the incredible stories they worked with has made me enthusiastic to read it. So
I bought the hardcover and had both of them sign it, as well as a handful of
contributing authors who are also guests here this weekend.

So began the
initial rounds of hall conversations. I made my way to Danny Birt’s first
concert of the weekend—always a treat, including his homage to National Pi Day
(March 14th, or 3.14), to the tune of “American Pie”.

My next panel was
the media track’s “Rise of the Strong Princess”—they were specifically focused on
film, and talked about the evolution of Disney princesses, as well as Leia’s
role in Star Wars, and other “I don’t need a hero to rescue me” characters.
Maybe I wasn’t in full con mode yet, because I didn’t find this panel as
engaging as I had thought it would be. Towards the end of the panel, the lights
mysteriously went off, and that was my cue to duck out to the Buffy Sing Along…

This screening the
musical episode, “Once more with Feeling” of Buffy’s 6th season, was
acted out in front of the screen by the talented cast of the Pineapple Shaped
Lamps comedy troupe. Audience singing was encouraged, so I belted out “Going
Through the Motions”, “I’ve Got a Theory”, “I’ll Never Tell,” “Under Your
Spell,” and “Rest in Peace”.

Then it was time
to head out to one of the few steampunk panels, featuring the inimitable John
Hartness. John and Tonia Brown led a lively audience discussion on favorite examples
of steampunk in TV and film, as well as literature. They helped to define the
genre for several audience members who were curious but didn’t really know what
steampunk *is*. And they satisfactorily answered the question “Is Steampunk
Dead?” with a resounding “No!”

One favorite
recommendation that’s new to me was The
Windup Girl, a “biopunk” science fiction novel, by Paolo Bacigalupi. John
called it “polarizing”—in his observation, people either love it or hate it. Firefly was described as “future
steampunk”, and John Carter of Mars
was given a nod, which I thought was interesting given that Burroughs was
writing at end of the Industrial Revolution (which broadly defines the era of
steampunk). Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Nikola Tesla were described as the
first authors of the genre. One audience member made a surprising reference to
one of my favorite books, Edward Bellamy’s Looking
Backward, published in 1888. I’m not sure I would describe it as steampunk,
per se, but always a treat to think about and discuss this delightful story.

One funny side
note to this panel. During a conversation about the amount of research that is
appropriate for a story, John related Joe Haldeman on a panel, where an
audience member was quizzing him about the depth of research for one of his
books. Haldeman finally threw up his hands and said, “It’s just a story!” And
as authors, it’s ultimately *our* story to do with as we will.

The last panel I
attended today was Romance in Fantasy, a full row of panelists talking to a
packed room. I’m currently debating how much romance (and sex) to include in a
couple of my stories, so I was very interested in this premise. I came in a bit
late (hall conversations and and and…), in the middle of panelists describing
their “pet peeves” in romance stories: sex as a reward for the hero for saving
the heroine; fated love, or love at first sight; love triangles; sex in the
middle of an adventure/danger scene; rape fantasy.

Interesting recommendations
for Man Made Boy, by Jon Skovron, and
another story I missed the title, about shapeshifting dragons who are partners
as both men and dragons. Discussion on bestiality, and what crosses the line
(and who draws that line). Strong discussion on rape fantasy. Good discussion
about the differences between romance, erotica, and porn, which boil down to
the development of character and story vs pure sex. Interesting comments about
writing breakups, and a quote to the effect of “Every relationship is a failure
until your last one”… Other strong recommendations included the movie Closer, featuring four very intimate and
difficult relationships; and Harry Turtledove’s story about a German tanker and
a Russian pilot.

The discussion
ended with a great question for tomorrow night’s “Writing A Sex Scene” panel: “When you’re
writing a lot of sex scenes, how do you ‘keep it fresh’?” Keep it fun, playful,
and lighthearted. Switch up situations and locations, not just sexual
positions. There are so many different *kinds* of sex: hot, angry, tender,
bittersweet, callous, satisfying, unsatisfying, unexpected, out of the ordinary…
Remember to ask yourself, “What’s the f***ing point?”

Feeling a little
tired, I was actually thinking of heading up to my room for an early night,
when I ran into a couple of friends I had been planning to see tomorrow. We
settled at the bar for a couple of beers and long, fun, rambling conversation.
The very best part of any con!

And now, a good
night’s sleep, with no alarm. We’ll see if I’m motivated enough to get up for “Breakfast
and Books” in the morning…

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Shelly ignored the watching
foreman as she stroked this digger’s teeth and lip. When it started to rumble,
she picked up the saddle reign and ran her hand down tot he bolts buried in the
digger’s neck. She would no more ride a digger without checking the animal and
gear than she would step onto a shuttle that hadn’t been properly inspected.
Another test.

Finally, she popped a piece of
dark rich chocolate into her mouth and tucked her foot into the stirrup,
pushing herself up and swinging her other leg over the digger’s back and into
the saddle.

The foreman squinted up at her.
“What’s the chocolate for? Never saw that.”

Shelly grinned down at him. “I
like chocolate.” She shrugged. He laughed aloud and stepped back to the fence.

Shelly didn’t ride with reins. If
she had to use them, she had already lost. She rubbed her left leg back and
forth against the digger’s side until she found the open rib bone. Tucking her
ankle under it, she nudged with her foot. The digger snorted and turned to the
right. Shelly found the right side rib and repeated her maneuver. It only took
a handful of times for the digger to understand what she wanted, and she had
him walking in a line near the fence, around the paddock. She headed for the
open pit and turned the digger in to find a bare spot on the ground next to it.

Leaning forward, Shelly spread her
fingers wide n either side of thedigger’s neck and slid them down in a swift
cutting motion. She lifted her hands away and slapped them high up on the
digger’s neck, sliding them down again. The digger lifted his head and roared.
Shelly flattened against his back and held on to the saddle ropes.

The digger opened his mouth wide
and plunged down, slmming into the dirt with a bone wrenching blow. His teeth
sank through the hard, dry soil, and he pulled a biteful for the first time. He
reared his head up again and roared in ecstasy, then plowed down again and
again, dredging up huge mouthfuls of dirt with each blow to the ground.

Shelly kept a close watch on his
progress, nudging him from side to side with her feet on his open ribs.
Finally, she began to sweep her arms up, rather than down, until the digger
stood silent and sweaty by the square pit he had dug.

The foreman clapped loud, slow
handclaps as he approached them. “You’re your Daddy’s girl, all right.
Impressive riding.Clean him up and come
back tomorrow. I’ll keep you busy.”

Before Shelly could thank him, he
whirled on his boot heel and jogged toward another digger and rider. She
watched for a moment and shook her head. The rider was an idiot. She had her
work cut out for her.

The foreman eyed Shelly up and
down with a dubious frown. She kept her hand in her pockets and her mouth shut.
She needed the work. He just needed a moment to adjust to the idea of a woman
handling a digger. She was used to it.

“You’re Cyrus’s girl, huh? He was
a good man. Best rider I ever knew. Shame what happened to him.”

Shelly ducked her head. She didn’t
talk about her Daddy. Ever.

“Are you sure you know how to
handle this thing?”

Shelly didn’t feel the need to
answer that directly. She just gave the foreman a level look and turned to the
digger shuffling behind him. It was a full-grown male, twice as large as one of
the old elephants. Shelly untucked her hands and held them wide by her face,
slowly waving them to get the digger’s attention. He shifted his head and
whuffed in her direction, blowing dust over her worn black boots.

She started a rumble deep in her
chest, and the foreman grinned, stepping back to let her approach the digger.
Testing her. She ignored him, focused on the big male. Still waving her hands
to make her face look larger, and direct his attention to her eyes, she slowly
stepped forward, stopping a few feet in front of the beast. His ears twitched
in greeting, and he lowered his head, his mouthful of jagged teeth swinging
close to her.

Suddenly Shelley was two years old
again, her Daddy holding her tight as she buried her face in his neck. The digger
musk combined with his own skin and soap until she couldn’t tell them apart.
Daddy and Digger smelled the same to her.

“Diggers teach us not to judge by
appearance,” Daddy said, his deep voice rumbling beneath her. “People are
terrified of them, but they are the most gentle souls I’ve ever known.” He
started his rumble, sort of like a cat purr, and Shelly felt him lift his free
hand to pet the digger facing them. She felt its hot breath on her skin, in her
mouth.

Turning her head to the side,
Shelly squinted her eyes open to see the giant digger. She reached out her
little hand next to Daddy’s and ran her fingers over the jagged teeth crowding
out of the digger’s mouth. “He’s rumbling, Daddy!”

“He likes you.”

“I like him too.” Shelly sat up in
Daddy’s arm, turning so she could reach her hand up under the digger’s lip like
Daddy was doing. The digger rumbled, and Daddy rumbled, and Shelly tried to
rumble, too.

By the time she was four, she
could rumble deeper and louder than most riders. She rode in front of Daddy on
the broad saddle, and he taught her everything he knew about riding diggers. By
the time she was six, Daddy would have let her ride alone if their foreman
would have let her. By the time she was eight, Daddy was gone. They said it was
a digger, but Shelly never believed it.

Jimmy crept under the orange cars
on Track 5, looking for snail shells to add to his collection. His ears rang
with the high-pitched whine of a new train, and he rolled out from under the
cars and jumped up, sprinting toward the depot. Pulling out his bell, he held
it high and rang it as loud as he could, shouting, “Incoming! Incoming! New
train!”

He kept clear of the
tracks—sometimes the new trains were still electrified when they arrived. Until
he saw which track it was on, he knew better than to risk any of them.

Huffing with the run, he waved to
Karly as she climbed down the caboose on Track 1-8. He still thought it was
funny that the engine was on Track 1, but the train stretched across tracks,
and the caboose was on 8. The train was still intact, and too big for them to
move without power, so it stayed. Karly liked to read up on top. She said she
liked to see the birds fly overhead swooping in and out of the depot. As if
there were anything to see out there.

“Come on, Karly! Let’s get there
first!” He urged her to climb down faster, and considered whether he should run
ahead of her anyway. First to reach the new train got squatter’s rights.
Depending on who was on it when it came in, of course.

“Which track is it coming in on,
Jimmy?” Karly had no sense for the trains.

Jimmy could always feel them. He
stood still and closed his eyes, calming his excitement so he could feel the
energy buzz in the air. His eyes opened and he grinned. “Track 6, come on!”

Karly jumped down from the side
ladder and ran toward him. Linking hands, they raced to the depot station just
in time to see the new train roll out of the darkened station door…straight
toward the 1-8. They froze, and Karly cried out, “Mama’s inside!”

Jimmy gripped her hand. “Don’t
worry. It’s okay. You’ll see…”

They watched the train roll
closer, slowing imperceptibly as it hit the old, ravaged tracks and the thick
grass. Karly gasped as it neared the 1-8, then they heard the rusty old switch
groan and slide, carrying the new arrival from its collision course with the
1-8 to its right. Where there was no track.

Karly narrowed her eyes, watching
the train wheeze to a stop. “What are we going to call it?” She mused. “The
Zero?”

“Who cares?” Jimmy shouted, racing
ahead of her. “Let’s go see if there are any kids on it!”

Karly smiled at the thought. There
hadn’t been any new children in the depot in a really, really long time. It
would be nice to have someone new to play with.

TBC?

Notes:

I have some ideas about these trains coming in. Maybe from different
times, different places. What brings them here? Can the people leave? Do they
age? What do they do in the meantime? I think I’d like to come back to this
one…

It wasn’t a huge display, but very
satisfying stargazing overall. Meteor tally: I saw 3 truly impressive meteors,
half a dozen other nice ones, and 2-3 dozen flashes, many of which left me
asking, “Was that a meteor, or an eye floater?” Under the circumstances, I’ll
go with meteor.

I went with a friend down to
Jordan Lake in Chatham County, NC. We arrived about 2:00am and stayed till
4:00am. Perched at the water’s edge on a boat ramp into the lake, we had a good
north-facing exposure, with reasonably clear views to the east and west as
well.

Ursa Major (the Big Dipper) was
very clear in the sky, as was Polaris, the North Star. The rest of Ursa Minor
(the Little Dipper) wasn’t as bright. Likewise, the Milky Way was the faintest
smudge across the sky to the northeast. I’m not very good at identifying constellations, even with my iphone app, “Sky Guide”. The stars were much more
visible than from my home base, but nothing like the brilliant sky over the
dark beach on Hilton Head at Thanksgiving, nor in Bimini many years ago. There's still a significant amount of light pollution in the night sky.

One of the most spectacular
meteors I saw was a large, bright trail straight down the middle of the Big
Dipper, shortly after we got setup and began to adjust to night vision. What a
great start! I was ready for a show. It was slow but fairly steady, about one
“good” meteor every ten minutes for so for the first hour and a half. Not much
the last half hour, but that’s partly because I was falling asleep! As we were
packing up to go, my companion saw a final spectacular meteor streak across the
still-dark sky.

By the time I got home, the sky
was already lightening to that beautiful smoky blue that comes before dawn. I saw
that sky often in college, leaving the computer, photo, and ceramic studios.
But it’s a rare day now that I get to sleep till lunchtime to make up for such
late hours!

So while the Camelopardalids didn't put on a great show, it was very satisfying, and felt like a good adventure. I'm looking forward to the Perseids and Leonids later this year, and hopefully Stargazing will be something I can report on a little more often here.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Garduth felt his heart skip a
beat, and his fingers tightened around hers. If he’d been home, he would have
snapped his fingers and tapped them on his chest in memory of the Honoured
Ones. His eyes widened, and he blurted, “But that means—”

She looked directly at him with a
steady gaze for the first time. Her eyes were dark brown with flecks of gold.
Her lashes were tinged with blue, echoed around her delicate, arched lips. He’d
never studied her face so clearly before.

“My parents both petrified before
I was born. I was pulled from my mother’s body before she died and spent three
months in a glass uterus. But even the Tandemkopf could not purify my blood. I
have the Binahl Virus. My body is turning to stone.”

She pulled up her dress, and he looked
down at her legs, wrapped in elaborate braces. But under the metal wire and
gears, he could see her skin, mottled blue like granite. Without thinking, he
reached out and touched her knee with his finger, tracing her patella, hard and
smooth beneath his touch. He suddenly realized how inappropriately intimate
this might be and snatched his hand away.

He smoothed her dress down over
her legs, never releasing her hand from his fingers. Turning to face her again,
he brushed away a tear from her cheek.

“But how have you lived? You said
both your parents died.”

“I’m not just a researcher here,
Garduth. I’m one of Tandemkopf’s greatest experiments. They’ve slowed the pace
of the virus, but they still cannot eradicate it entirely. And I fear even if
they do, it will be too late for me. “

By all the ghods. She was turning
to stone. Garduth shuddered, but when she tried to pull her fingers free, he
would not let go.

“Sheria, why did you say you were
sorry?”

She looked away again. “I’m sorry
I was too weak to hide my pain from you any longer.”

“You’re one of the strongest
people I’ve ever known, Sheria. One of the hardest working people here. No one
knows what you’re going through. But now I do. You don’t have to go through it
alone.”

Proud member of

Favorite Quotes

You have to start somewhere in order to end up somewhere good!~Margaret S. McGraw

~~~

Be kind, be brave, be fierce, be love.~Laura Anne Gilman

~~~

Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.~Megan Devine

~~~

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. ~Mark Twain

~ ~ ~

Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars. ~Casey Kasem

When opportunity puckers up, lean in for a smooch. Only a fool tells the angels to come back tomorrow.~Steven Barnes

~ ~ ~

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.~ Dalai Lama

~ ~ ~

We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.~ Japanese proverb

~ ~ ~

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.~ Aesop

~ ~ ~

Everything flows, nothing stays.~ Heraclitus

~ ~ ~

Balance, always a balance. Work to give life purpose, play to lift the heart, music to soothe the spirit, love to give one strength. One cannot ask for more.~ Pelzmantel, K.A. Laity

~ ~ ~

Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.~ 1st part paraphrased from J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan; 2nd part from either Plato or (more likely) Philo of Alexandria

~ ~ ~

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives... be kind anyway

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies... succeed anyway

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you... be honest and frank anyway

What you may spend years building, someone may destroy overnight... build anyway

If you find serenity and happiness, people may be jealous... be happy anyway

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow... do good anyway

Give the best you have, and it may never be enough... give the best you have anyway ~ Mother Teresa